The Cumulative Tiebreak

Wizards of the CoastThursday, August 01, 2013

The cumulative tiebreak is a formula that mathematically produces the following result – the player (or team) who most recently had more points after a round wins the tiebreak.

To break ties between players with the same number of points, look back to the last time they did not have the same number of points. Whoever’s total was higher at that point will have a higher tiebreaker. The results of a player’s previous round opponents does not have an effect on the cumulative tiebreak.

This also means that if player A has lower tiebreakers than player B, player A can never pass player B unless they end a round with more points.

Here is the formula used to calculate the tiebreaker every round.

Current Round Tiebreaker

=

Previous Round Tiebreaker

4

+

Current Match Point Total

Example:

Round

Points Earned In Round

Previous Round Cumulative Tiebreaker

Match Point Total at Round End

Current Tiebreaker

1

0 (Lose)

0.000000

0

0.000000

2

3 (Win)

0.000000

3

3.000000

3

1 (Draw)

3.000000

4

4.750000

4

3 (Win)

4.750000

7

8.187500

5

0 (Lose)

8.187500

7

9.046875

For round four, below is an example of us calculating it out so you can see where 8.1875 comes from.